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PentaWare Inc. is expanding globally with an upgrade to its compression utility software PentaZip. PentaZip 5.1 will ship next week and will be available in five different languages, in addition to including new features such as increased script support and an updated viewer, according to President and Chief Executive Officer Claude Ostfeld.

PentaZip is a compression program that supports the creation of archives larger than 4GB.

The language feature will better meet the needs of PentaWare’s users, according to Ostfeld. English, French, German, Italian and Spanish are the current language options, with additional languages to follow in the future. PentaWare has a total of 650,000 registered users, most of whom are in large corporations.

The Hampton, N.H.-based company said the updated scripting feature includes increased support for various formats such as Zip, Tar and GZip. Scripting, according to Ostfeld, is a “means of memorizing frequently performed compressions and extractions.” The feature works with all formats, not just Zips, and allows the user to save files using the date and time, he said.

Ostfeld described PentaZip 5.1 as a “mother’s little helper” because it can be used as a solution to numerous problems. For example, if a user cannot afford to install Microsoft Corp.’s Office XP on their laptop, PentaZip is designed so its general purpose viewer makes it possible to open Microsoft documents without actually installing Office XP on the laptop. The PentaZip viewer supports multimedia, graphics, and text and spreadsheets.

PentaZip is Microsoft-certified for Windows 2000 Professional, Designed for Windows 98/NT and Designed for Windows XP, Ostfeld said.

The boxed version of PentaZip 5.1 is priced at US$59.95 and will be shipped next week, or it can be downloaded at http://www.pentazip.com/ for US$49.95.